I for one could give a shit about the sexual component of this looks like contractual sex. All that is between him and his wife. It is interesting because of the money...and the shear fear that releasing whatever she has on the Trump team.

And the other thing is Trumps lawyer going to take the bullet for Trump? Lawyers not allowed to pay for something for their client unless their client is indigent and there is no other way it can be paid...doubt it.

I also don't care about the sex*, but there's a very good chance they're guilty of tax fraud.

* Though it's typical Republican hypocrisy that they're suddenly A-OK with the Dumpster's pecadilloes.

I agree the sex itself is irrelevant, unless it’s considered a crime, and you try to cover it up. Listen to the whole podcast, it’s a doozie.

It’s funny you mention tax-fraud because it’s a small oversight, but a large point. Everyone (Cohen especially) seems to be missing that y’all aren’t allowed to do/give things for/to each other for free. I know that sounds weird but let me explain.

Unless you are related, the amount of money/goods/services you transfer (without expectation, i.e. a gift) to another individual is limited each year. Everything else is considered commerce between individuals/corporations. If hellboy just gave steele $1 million because he likes this site so much, steele is going to have to report that as income on his taxes, even IF hellboy says “no no it was just a gift”. This would be true even if hellboy INSTEAD just paid off all steele’s student debt.

When you win the lottery, or prizes on price-is-right, or even trying to give a car away for “free”. Gotta pay your taxes.

26 USC 7203.

Cohen keeps shouting from the hilltops he transferred out of his own funds but specifically for the benefit of his client Mr. Trump...

Yeah, I meant ethically - if the sex itself is illegal that's another level of trouble for DD. The NY state law against adultery seems like the kind of never-enforced vestigial statute that should have been repealed years ago, but even if it wasn't enough to make the Delaware LLC illegal, the payment of hush money, the obstruction of justice, the tax fraud, and the campaign finance fraud surely would do so.

Fascinating podcast, does seem like checkmate. Even if the Dumpster pays Stormy 1 billion rubles to drop her suit, enough has been revealed to warrant a criminal investigation. If he admits to being DD he's admitting to criminal behavior, if he doesn't she can sell the texts and pictures and prove that he's DD. The only other apparent exit would be for Cohen to fall on his sword, but I'm not sure how that would prevent Daniels from releasing the material, exposing the Dumpster to at least another obstruction of justice charge. I guess he might skate in that case if there's no evidence the Russians knew anything about Daniels.

Thanks for posting.

Possibly she might get another, much larger off-the-books payment that would lead her to drop the lawsuit and disappear.

That was my thought too, but she's already on Mueller's radar now and a criminal subpoena overrides any NDA. At this point I think the Dumpster's best hope is that everyone does what DC almost always does and just shrugs and looks the other way. That doesn't seem Mueller's style though. He took down the Teflon Don after all.

Also a big possibility that this payment also violates election rules, as the gift is likely to be seen as a political donation.

Yup. They mention this in the podcast - if DD is in fact the Dumpster Dictator, then it clearly was.

My greatest interest in this story is the Republican reflection as they try to justify accepting this while condemning Clinton/Lewinsky, an obvious unraveling of their imagined cloak of moral superiority. Trump needs to end the Republican party, it having a trajectory which will otherwise kill us all, and this boorish sex scandal should shave off that aspect of their brand.

having a trajectory which will otherwise kill us all

That's a feature, not a bug.
Evangelicals see Trump's Jerusalem move as key to 'end-times'

If we can forgive Trump's infidelity, we can surely forgive his crimes in stealing the election, so long as he pays off by killing us all.

Well, they say that Redemption Equals Death. But who's redemption and who's death?

Dan Savage is afraid that we're going to see Dumpster dick pics - but hopeful that this will at least accelerate the normalization of sexting for future political candidates.

That was a very entertaining podcast. Thank you for showing it to us.

Because a crime has been committed.

You can say you don’t care, but I’m betting two and a half shits that if Obama (or pick your ‘favorite’ democrat) had committed a fourth of this stuff, you’d cry bloody murder.

Russia investigation going on that has not found SHIT except stuff that happened even before Trump started running for office.

To be clear, most election related crime happens before the election. But thanks for playing.

No angle. Not sure why you think someone can only be in trouble for one thing at a time.

The “Russian thing” hasn’t been released, so not sure how it can be “not panning out”.

Listen to the podcast, they bring up Clinton. You know what makes this different? Paying money, through an LLC created solely to pay hush money, to prevent Election Day embarrassment. That’s a crime. He could have just admitted the affair and probably would have been fine (no one prosecutes adultery). However, he apparently felt it necessary to commit a bunch of crimes to hide it.

They couldn’t get Clinton to stick because verbally lying (no monetary/intimidation fueled cover-up) about something embarrassing didn’t appear to rise to the level. Paying large sums of money to influence an election 11 days prior? I guess we’ll see.

Yeah, people pushing the "Russian nothingburger" line are willfully oblivious to the multiple indictments, multiple plea bargains, and ongoing developments like Kushner's financial predicament, the Malaysian corruption scandal, the Seychelles meet and blatant lying under oath by Prince and others, the memo that Putin nixed Romney as SoS, and so on. Obstruction of justice is the least of the Dumpster's worries. Rather than the Russian investigation not panning out, you have to be suffering under a spectacular level of delusion to not see that it's likely to be the biggest corruption scandal the US had ever dealt with, and Mueller is not only running a very tight ship, his investigation is proceeding remarkably quickly compared to past special counsel investigations. Anyone who says there's no fire under all that smoke is desperately trying to convince themselves to eat a big pile of bullshit, because they're not remotely convincing to anyone else.

So you’re saying to proceed with the investigation?

I wasn’t alive for your reference above, but I would have said investigate that too?

Ok, are you saying that should stop?

I haven’t seen anyone talk about JFK except for you. We can’t change anything 50 years ago, I don’t think anyone is even attempting to excuse anything.

As for Clinton, everyone is agreeing that Trump can have sex with whoever he wants. He’s not legally allowed to pay money to cover it up 11 days prior to the election and not report it (funds spent).

What are we being righteous about? No one brought up morality.

Me I'm still upset about David and that Bathsheba woman.